2008 Presidential Race - Zennie Questions Fayetteville, GA

I recently took my trusty Sony camcorder to visit my Mom in Fayetteville, GA and in the process ask some of the locals two questions: first, what they thought of the 2008 Presidential Race, and second who they planned to vote for. I received some interesting responses.

Now, it must be reported that I did not go up to every person I encountered. I randomly picked my spots and let's face it, most people will not speak before a camera. Yeah, someone may give this great opinion but the minute I say "Hey, can I get that on camera?" they will say "No, not on camera." The very act of coaxing them is so time consuming that I'd rather not be bothered. But then there are people who do speak, and they offer a great opening to be interviewed.

Also, I knew I was going to make a five-minute video -- ok, almost six -- and so didn't focus on talking to a lot of people. I wanted to have full unedited responses, and that's what I got.

I also didn't try to get some kind of ethnic balance. To be frank, Fayetteville, GA offers a pretty fair variety of people. The 2000 census, which really reflects the mid-1990s when you think about it, is just plain wrong about Fayetteville, Georgia in 2007. This Atlanta suburb is now seemlingly half-African American, if not majority Black. Regardless, my experience confirms my assertion that our American Census and the country's overall perception of itself on a regional basis is way out of whack with reality.

The true picture I get is of an America more diverse and mixed in thought and in human color than we are led to think by the mainstream media, which itself needs an overhaul because it's so behind the times in how it covers American Culture -- fact is replaced by bias dressed as fact all too often.

But I digress.

What I learned in my little bitty video survey is that people have made of their minds -- sort of. The responses you hear all come with the causionary sentence "For now", or "At this time." Which means they could switch or shift for some unknown reasons.

To me this is shaping up as the most volitile and unpredictable election in American History. I think Bill Kristol nailed it when he said the 2008 Presidential Race will break all the rules. There are so many elements that are a part of today's culture that were not even evident in 2004, when President Bush was reelected -- YouTube, cell-phone-only-homes, to name a few of them. Plus, the standard methods of surveying our society's preferences doens't even capture this, and yet the results are reported on CNN and other news networks and without introspection.

Wow.

This is the election where America will learn how wrong it is about itself.